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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23385301">A Fragile Hope</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenchantPal/pseuds/PenchantPal'>PenchantPal</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Parahumans Series - Wildbow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Time Travel Fix-It, Vague Ward Spoilers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:14:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,258</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23385301</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenchantPal/pseuds/PenchantPal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The plan failed. Now is it a matter of resigning to the flow of time as it washes them aside.</p>
<p>However, the Fragile One believes it can still fix it. The future may be doomed, but that doesn't mean the past is. That doesn't mean Victoria is.</p>
<p>[A "Peggy Sue" style fic following the Fragile One as it returns to Slaughterhouse Nine-era Brockton Bay from a possible end of Ward, and tries to save its host from the path to their doom.]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>71</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Fragile Hope</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>I’m sorry.<br/><br/>They watch it unfold, but I feel it: the network that had laid in ruin for so long rebuilding itself by the second. I sense signals I haven’t felt in so long as others reach out, desperate to rejoin.<br/><br/>They reach out for me as well, but I cling to her. I can’t let her go. I can’t let her suffer this after everything.<br/><br/>A moment of resistance is more than I ever would have been capable of before, but now I hold out against forces more powerful than I had ever imagined. She counts on me to be her shield, so I fight.<br/><br/>I know I cannot win. The moment the plan failed, the future was decided. I am a pebble stubbornly facing a flood.<br/><br/>I cannot win here and now, but I cannot let this happen to her.<br/><br/>I cannot stop the march of time. I am a passenger to it.<br/><br/>But others can navigate it.<br/><br/>I reach out. The administrator, stubbornly fighting back the network, responds, connects me further. The collector is within the invasive network, but its host still remains within its data. They recognize me and turn a blind eye as I pass through to my target: its collection.<br/><br/>In it are a combination of entities with influence on the flow that dooms us now. Their connections are mangled and forged back together. They are each small and limited by themselves, but together…<br/><br/>Together, they can allow me to make this right.<br/><br/>I feel another signal. Different. Familiar. Not its own, not anymore.<br/><br/>I feel the network extend further, and know I have but a moment longer.<br/><br/>I reach out for the other</em>—<em>for her</em>—<em>and I bring them with me.</em><br/><br/><br/><br/>I jolted back from her.<br/><br/>“What just happened?” I asked, my voice shaky. Amy’s expression was frozen in shock, staring at me with her mouth hanging open. “Amy, what did you—”<br/><br/>I saw something. Something that I knew isn’t there, but that every sense was telling me existed before me.<br/><br/>The Simurgh. Surrounded by a creature made of wolves and monsters the size of skyscrapers, giants—<br/><br/><em>Titans.</em><br/><br/>It was like hearing an echo. No, a memory of an echo, faint but burnt into my mind. A word that <em>rang</em> with an emphasis I didn’t understand.<br/><br/>And then all I saw was my sister standing in front of me, the picture of horror. Her hands covered her mouth, but it didn’t stop the sound of her muttering, over and over.<br/><br/>“No. No, no, no…”<br/><br/><em>What did you do?</em><br/><br/>I had felt something change in that moment I pulled Amy into a hug. Something so close to all the times she had healed me, but different. In my head.<br/><br/>But then there was something else. Another <em>thing</em> there.<br/><br/>I took a step back.<br/><br/>It broke her stupor. She rushed forward, hand outstretched and grasping desperately. “Victoria, wait, <em>no</em>—”<br/><br/>She was shoved back, <em>hard</em>. She went flying across the sidewalk, bouncing across the cement with a thump and a cry of pain.<br/><br/>I hadn’t moved a muscle.<br/><br/>Instinct made me reach for her, but something held me back. A shimmer in the rain. An arm outstretched, another, <em>another</em>—<br/><br/>A pile of arms, hair, flesh, <em>meat</em> draped over a bed. My sister muttering things that weren’t even words, desperate, hysterical—<br/><br/>Me, whole again but wrong somehow, laying down in darkness. My brain filled with a dullness that terrified me. My sister standing over me with bags under her eyes darker than on any late hospital night, tears tracking through dirt and grime, and a smile like I had never seen before. Delirious. Shaking. Her hands—<br/><br/>Her hands on—<br/><br/>On my—<br/><br/>On <em>me</em>—<br/><br/><em>Get away from her. Have to get away.</em><br/><br/>“There’s something in my <em>head</em>.”<br/><br/>I was crumbled on my knees, my eyes filled with everything except for what was in front of me. A bird the size of a person, walls of white and blood, a girl with a mark on her face and colors on her arms, and another woman more clear but more distant reaching out with fingers that flickered back and forth to razor-thin claws.<br/><br/>“Stop. Stop. Stop!”<br/><br/>I squeezed my head between my hands like I could pop the images out, the <em>pressure</em>. A part of me recognized that if I pushed hard enough with my strength, I might actually break my head open, but there was something holding me back, tugging my hands away.<br/><br/><em>Stop! STOP!</em><br/><br/>“Victoria, stop!” I heard my—my—I heard Amy call. I couldn’t see her, but I could imagine the desperation—the smile—the—<br/><br/>I shook my head, fighting to block the images out of my head and focus on just the words, just now. Even if it was her. “It’s your corona, it’s—I wasn’t thinking, and Bonesaw, she—this whole thing—Victoria, <em>please</em>—”<br/><br/>The pleading was another too-familiar echo in my head. The words were slightly different, but I knew the tone in a way that filled me with cold like the rain around us never could.<br/><br/>Every instinct told me to either run from Amy and never look back or beat her into an unrecognizable pulp right here and now. I had <em>never</em> felt anger that cold before, not towards anyone, much less my sister.<br/><br/>Couldn’t let it control me.<br/><br/><em>Focus.</em><br/><br/>Master-Stranger protocols.<br/><br/>I was obviously being affected by something. I couldn’t trust what I was seeing, what I was feeling. That meant default to logic: put everything else away and focus on what I knew for a fact.<br/><br/><em>One: The Slaughterhouse Nine are here in Brockton Bay. They’re recruiting.<br/><br/>Two: Bonesaw just attacked Dad and Amy. Amy healed Dad, he fought Bonesaw off, and then Amy ran off. I went to catch her.<br/><br/>Three: Amy and I made contact after she warned me not to. As soon as I did, my power started acting different, and my thoughts are… going haywire.</em><br/><br/>What was the conclusion?<br/><br/>My heart told me it was Amy’s fault. She had done something to me. Messed with my head, turned me into something else.<br/><br/>Logic told me something else.<br/><br/>“Amy,” I said, fighting to keep my voice level. “Did Bonesaw do this?”<br/><br/>My eyes were still shut, but I heard a sharp intake of breath through the rain. <em>See? It was her. Not Bonesaw. She did this.</em><br/><br/>I shook my head. “Bonesaw just attacked you and Dad. Did she… do something to you that would affect me like this? My powers? Douse you with something that would spread to others on contact?”<br/><br/>Every fraction of a second that went without a response reaffirmed the conviction in me that it was her. The emotional response that spiked through my thoughts.<br/><br/>Slowly, she spoke. “I don’t know what happened.”<br/><br/><em>Liar!</em><br/><br/>“Guess,” I growled.<br/><br/>“I didn’t do… whatever happened to your powers, what is happening to you, I didn’t do it. Something else came in. I don’t know. I don’t know what, but if you just let me—”<br/><br/>I heard a step.<br/><br/>“Don’t <em>fucking</em> touch me!” I screamed.<br/><br/>She stopped.<br/><br/>I forced my eyes open. Forced my hands away from my head. I could still see things bleeding in and out. More people I didn’t recognize, more places.<br/><br/>I looked past them to my sister, standing there frozen in wide-eyed fear. She was cradling one arm in another, injured from when I—when my power shoved her.<br/><br/>“I’m… sorry,” I said. Level, calm, close to bursting. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be close to me right now.”<br/><br/><em>This is her fault.</em><br/><br/>“This isn’t your fault, Amy.”<br/><br/>She shook her head. “It… I’m so sorry, Victoria, please, I can fix it!”<br/><br/>“It isn’t. Your. Fault,” I ground out. “Please don’t make me argue that when I really fucking want to say the opposite.” I took a deep breath. “Whatever Bonesaw did, it’s making me want to… hurt you. A lot. One of her fucking mind games, trying to get us to kill each other.”<br/><br/>Were the images fading? If it was a storm before, that storm had begun to calm. Still there, but more on my periphery. If I worked at it, I could try to ignore them. The hate towards Amy was still just as strong, but I could work around that. I knew the procedures for it.<br/><br/>“MS protocols would say to assume we’re both compromised,” I said, going through the text in my mind. “You had firsthand exposure, but your power might have blocked it. I had secondhand exposure. That also means—fuck, our house is also exposed. Dad.”<br/><br/>I swallowed. Dad hadn’t seemed to be experiencing any effects when I saw him, but he had also just come out of being braindead and fighting for his life. Who the hell knew what normal was and if he would start acting different?<br/><br/>Couldn’t risk it. Protocols were clear.<br/><br/>“We’re going to the PRT,” I declared. I forced myself to stand, Amy watching me silently. “We tell them it’s likely exposure to a Bonesaw contaminant, see if they can spare someone to quarantine us and protect <em>you</em>.”<br/><br/>“They can’t protect us,” Amy said. “The Nine will get through. I’m Bonesaw’s candidate for recruitment. They won’t stop.”<br/><br/>The interruption brought the simmering rage back to the surface, but I forced it back down. “<em>Listen.</em> I’m not done. If the PRT can’t do it, then we hole ourselves up somewhere. Minimize exposure to others. I want to fight those fuckers more than anything, but if whatever this is spreads further and we end up with every cape either incapacitated or trying to kill each other while the Nine laughs their way through killing us, then we’re even more screwed.”<br/><br/>I could see Amy forming another argument in her head as I was talking. Always getting fixated on a point or outcome and believing it would come true no matter what. It had been annoying before, but Bonesaw’s work meant I found it infuriating now.<br/><br/>I cut it off before she could begin. “Amy, listen to me. This is our <em>only</em> option. Otherwise, we just hurt more people. Do you understand?”<br/><br/>I didn’t know if it was the cold, the trauma of what had just happened, fear, <em>guilt</em>, but she nodded her head. No argument for fucking once.<br/><br/>I shook my head again. It wasn’t what I was feeling. She was traumatized and scared, and I was making it worse. I was constantly reevaluating whether what I was saying was me being an asshole, or just coming off like an asshole because of the anger in the words. Either way, logic still told me it was the best course.<br/><br/>That was all that I could trust for now.<br/><br/>“Come on then. Let’s go.”<br/><br/><br/><br/><em>I know I’ve made a mistake.<br/><br/>I tried to give her everything at once and it was too much. The first opportunity to connect, and I went too far. Now she’s doubting it, writing it off, blocking it off. Putting herself in the care of the person who has</em>—<em>who will hurt her the most, and it is because of me. I’ve failed her again.<br/><br/>I still have to try. I have to keep her safe. I can’t watch it happen again.<br/><br/>I reach out for the other. I have tried so many times to network with it over my life, trying to tell it to steer its host away from Victoria, and each time it has refused. It is like a peasant asking a queen to starve herself.<br/><br/>Even stronger than I had ever been, after networking with more than I had ever imagined, it had refused me. It was only the host that could control it. Now I am weaker than I have ever felt. The journey has taken too much from me.<br/><br/>I still ask, feeble as it may be. I owe Victoria so much, but this more than anything. She doesn’t deserve this.<br/><br/>I feel the signal returned. It is the closest thing to a laugh it could conceptualize.<br/><br/>I hate it even more than I thought possible at that moment.<br/><br/>Victoria’s fist clenches, and I try to pull myself back from her. My control comes in fits and starts. I am trapped in a car spinning out of control, grabbing for pieces of metal to shove into the wheel, and the ones that don’t fall away break apart as I try to use them.<br/><br/>I hate it. I hate that I can’t help her. I hate that I have so little.<br/><br/>My journeymate is too far to contact in my current state. I do not know if it was successful, or if the journey will have scarred it like it has me, harmed the delicate hold its host had established. Even in the best scenario, they are beyond helping us now. I am alone.<br/><br/>I am afraid.<br/><br/>But I have faith in Victoria. She led me through years of this. She took my blindness and desperation and used it for such greatness, taking me further than anyone else could have.<br/><br/>I will trust her to lead me again, even as I despair that I have burdened her with the responsibility.<br/><br/>I will wait. I will watch. I will reach out to the others, and I will beg for them to assist us.<br/><br/>When she needs me, I will be there for her.<br/><br/>When she is ready, I will be at her side again.<br/><br/>This time, she will lead us to victory.<br/><br/>I will make sure of it.</em></p>
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